Next, the fish! Press bright pimiento "fish" cut-outs into first layer. Continue making gelatin layers with vegetable "fish" (cucumber, carrot), at different levels. Mold last layer with shrimp, shell macaroni and cauliflowerettes for "ocean bed."

Unmold!

3.5.3208

Now, I would absolutely love to take credit for this one, but it was actually made by a friend of mine, Carolyn. I have made a lot of really great friends through this blog, but Carolyn has the distinction of being a good, normal friend that I introduced to the crazy world of vintage recipes. And she totally loves them, which makes me happy because she loves to hear me yammer about my latest research, or help me test my crazy food experiments or just occasionally leave nice comments on the blog.

So a couple days before TJ was born, I got a text from Carolyn asking if we were around. Carolyn is always doing nice things like bringing me ridiculous amounts of her homemade pulled pork and bringing over her daughter to play with Alex, so I texted back, “Yep, we’re here!”, thinking that maybe she was stopping by on her way downtown or something like that.

Then she rang the doorbell and showed up with two of her friends, her two children, and her husband.

And they brought me not one. Not two. But THREE aspic aquariums.

“Wow, you put a lot of gelatin in these.” I said.

“Yeah, well, the only person who could have advised us is you, and this was supposed to be a surprise.”

Now, Carolyn and her friends are all scientists who happen to work with bugs and fish, so they made them as accurate as vegetables would allow. And since they were going for realism, they decided to make one “dead” aquarium and two “live” ones.

I love overachievers.

They dropped them off, helped me unmold them and cheered when they looked cool. Then they took some Halloween candy, wished me luck and took off because I was having crazy contractions and just generally getting ready to have TJ, which wasn’t a fun process.

But here are a bunch of production photos that were taken by Carolyn since I wasn’t there when these were made. In fact, I don’t even have a picture of Tom trying these because soon after this I headed into the hospital so we didn’t even get a chance to “enjoy” them. But Carolyn reads the comments regularly, so she might be able to answer questions if you have any! Enjoy the creation of three Aspic Aquariums!

Tequila makes everything better.

Suspend “plants”, in this case rosemary, with thread and tape.

Fashion aquatic animals out of things like mini peppers, carrots, snap peas and artichokes. They’re entomologists, so they favor things without an exoskeleton like octopuses and squids.

Mix 6 packets unflavored gelatin in 1 cup cold water. (They wanted a “hard” set to help hold the veggie marine life in place. You can use less if you want.) Add a cup of boiling water and 2 tbsp. sugar until dissolved. Add 3 more cups cold water and about 1 tbsp. lemon juice. Color with 1-2 drops of blue food coloring. The materials scientist helped with this part.

Pour, layer animals (using more tape, toothpicks, chopsticks, whatever you can find to hold things in place), and let set in freezer for about 20 minutes.

FINAL step: Let the expert do the unmolding. And be amazed that this actually worked.

Tips:

-We used a glass 4-cup measuring cup for the “dead” aquarium, and 2-L plastic jam containers for the others. We lined the inside of the jam containers with masking tape to make a “smooth” surface but just wound up with a weird texture on the outside of the “live” gelatins.

-If you’re only making one aquarium of this size, downsize the amount of gelatin you make (1.2 packets gelatin to 1 cup water; 3 packets gelatin to 2.5 cups water).

-It was helpful to add a little gelatin glue between a fish body and tail and let them set before trying to suspend them. For the octopus, it helped to add a very thin layer of gelatin at the “leg” phase, reset floating legs, and let set before pouring a thicker layer. We definitely had to reset floating things once we’d placed the gelatin in the freezer.

-We untied the “plants” once we had about a layer left to pour and let them go swervy.

-We used an entire box of unflavored gelatin packets and drank a whole bottle of tequila while making these.

I love everything retro, vintage, mid-century, kitsch and all things atomic! A 21st century housewife just trying to fit in...to the 50's. I have a passion for vintage recipes and an enormous vintage cookbook collection that I keep testing, even though by now I should know better. Creator of Mid-Century Menu (www.midcenturymenu.com), No Pattern Required (www.nopatternrequired.com), and I Ate The 80's (www.iatethe80s.com).

Ok… these are awesome! However, I think aspic is totally disgusting, so I want to make as a sweet dessert with Jello. Substitute fruit for the begetables, I guess… Anyway, too much fun and VERY ARTISTIC!!

Thanks for the compliment on the shirt! Only I (Carolyn) am Canadian. I spend a silly amount of time explaining why Smarties are delicious (as opposed to those yucky Rockets a.k.a. U.S. Smarties). Cheers!

What fun! and how nice there are such good friends in the world. Very nice to read. I’ve seen that blocky aquarium in the ad and admired it. The three small ones look wonderful, the octopus and squid! Eeeeee!

I have to show this to the 6 year old. She went to the Aquarium of the Pacific today . Told the 3 year old to look for the peanut butter fish in the tank next to the jelly fish.She is my kitchen helper.

Will probably down size the first try to make it easy. Kid size cups.

Now I just need to find a way to explain to her mom why she needs Tequila for this.

. I wonder how this would work out if you did a sweet version. I suppose you could make gelatin that was actually tasty, but I would have no idea how to go about that. But maybe for a kids party or for something awful? It might be fun to do it with fruit and jello.